A granite statue of the Virgin Mary, thought to date from around the 14-century, has been pulled from the Sar River near the Galician capital, Santiago de Compostela.

The valuable gothic statue depicts a seated Virgin Mary holding a child, with angels above her shoulders and floral decoration beneath her feet. The face of the Virgin and the head of the child appear to have been removed long ago.

It was discovered on June 5 by Fernando Brey, who told La Voz de Galicia “I was fishing when I tripped over the rock”. He soon realized that it was not any old rock. “I noticed the rock was square, which is odd in a river, and then I looked at its lines, at the cape and at the shape of the head. And I said to myself: ‘There’s something here’.”

Ten days later, experts retrieved the statue from the river and it was taken this week to the Pilgrimage Museum in Santiago de Compostela.

The Galician regional government subsequently provided a statement on the statue. “The face of the Virgin is gone, as is the head of the child,” they said. “This is probably due to an old impact inflicted in an attempt to desanctify the piece.”

“On both sides of the Virgin, by each of her shoulders, are two angels or putti. They’re fairly worn away, but you can still make out each of their faces and a hand holding up an object or the Virgin’s own cape.”

During a visit to the site, the minister for culture and tourism in the regional government, Román Rodríguez, added: “beyond its cultural and historic value, we’ll also need to try to put together the story of this statue: what happened, and how could it remain undiscovered so close to the city for so many centuries? It must be quite a story.”

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